Apple Admits CPU Throttling for MacBook Pro, Promises Fix

Apple is at it again, so after throttling iPhone components, they also did the same with the MacBooks. This time it has to do with the latest MacBook Pro laptops, which have a tendency to overheat in the Core i9 hexa core setup, with AMD Radeon Pro Graphics. It’s all about the throttling again, for the sake of lower temperature and Apple promised a fix.

Such laptops can even reach a price of $300 or more and the company is preparing a software update that solves the problem. Apple blames it all on a missing digital key in the firmware, that messes up the thermal management system. This may cause CPU clock speeds to haywire under heavier loads. Basically, when the PC gets hot, the CPU slows down until everything gets cooler.

This means that the huge power of the Core i9 is wasted and you could do better with an older device. Ars Technica did tests with Cinebench, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere, GeekBench and other programs, all of them running faster on a 2018 MacBook Pro with Core i7 than the Core i9 unit. Apple claims that the bug fix is ready for prime time and it’ll be rolled out as part of the macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update, which is coming today.

I’ve been hearing about this problem ever since the laptop was first in stores, so it took them a while to do something about it. New results are coming in and it seems that the update helps with functioning under heavy work loads. Some people are finding bigger improvements than others, which is odd.